Pope Innocent, in the thirteenth century, allowed the cardinals the use of scarlet hats, and about the year 1440, the use of hats by persons on a journey appears to have been introduced into France, and soon after became common in that country, whence probably it spread to the other European States. When Charles VII. of France made his triumphant entry into Rouen in 1440, he wore a felted hat. Hatters of the present day most generously ascribe the honor of the invention of felting, and of its prospective introduction to that of hat-making, to the old renowned Monk St. Clement, who when marching at the head of his pilgrim army obtained some sheep's wool to put between the soles of his feet and the sandals that he wore, which of course became matted into a solid piece. The old gentleman, philosophizing upon this circumstance, promulgated the idea of its future usefulness, and thus it is said arose the systematic art of felting and of hat-making. However all this may be, still the invention of felted fabrics for the use of man may have been, as some assert, very ancient and of quite uncertain origin. The simplicity of its make, as compared with that of woven cloth, shows all speculative assertions to be rather uncertain. However obscure the origin may be, we learn that the first authentic accounts of hatters appeared in the middle ages, in Nuremburg in 1360, in France in 1380, in Bavaria in 1401, and in London in 1510. The hatting trade of the United States of America is noticed first in the representations made by the London Board of Trade to the House of Commons in the year 1732, in which they refer to the complaints of the London hatters, regarding the extent to which their particular manufacture was being carried at that time in New York and in the New England States. The Fashions. A look at the fashions and mode of dressing in ancient times causes amusement. So capricious is the fancy of man that nothing is immutable, all is change, and hats have been of all conceivable shapes and colors, and dressed with the most fanciful decorations, plumes, jewels, silk-loops, rosettes, badges, gold and silver bands and loops, &c. &c. The crowns and brims having been in all possible styles from the earliest period. It would appear that nothing is left for the present and all coming time, but the revival of what has already been, even to the fantastical peaked crown that rose half a yard above the wearer's head. In the fifteenth century, hats in Great Britain were called vanities, and were all imported, costing twenty, thirty, and forty English shillings apiece, which were large sums of money at that early period.